


Right Here, By Your Side

by halcyon_autumn



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Domestic Fluff, F/M, Felix Hugo Fraldarius is Bad at Feelings, Fluff, Getting Together, Modern AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-28
Updated: 2021-01-28
Packaged: 2021-03-13 16:07:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,906
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29031408
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/halcyon_autumn/pseuds/halcyon_autumn
Summary: Felix likes Bernadetta's apartment and cat quite a bit. He's pretty sure he likes her too. But now he needs to actually express that, and he's never been much good at that sort of thing.Writing for the Felix Rarepair Week Prompt "Hobbies"
Relationships: Felix Hugo Fraldarius/Bernadetta von Varley
Comments: 18
Kudos: 38





	Right Here, By Your Side

Felix, though he would have died before admitting it, liked his friends. It was infuriating that Sylvain was forever dragging him out to bars to pick up girls, byes, but he always went along. He complained about Ingrid always wanting him to go to sporting events, but it was nice to see her so enthusiastic. He couldn’t even pretend to be annoyed with Annette; she would send him websites for random spots all over the city and drag him to cat cafes or hipster stores that sold old records and vintage polaroid photos. Dimitri…..was absolutely infuriating most times, but occasionally they sat down and played a game of Super Smash like when they were kids, and the waves of nostalgia would swamp Felix in the best possible way. But none of them quite compared to the way he felt when he was tucked away in Bernadetta’s little apartment.

“Hey Bernie,” he said as the door just barely cracked open. “It’s just me.”

“Felix!” she said, still mostly hidden behind the door. The door shut, and he heard the click of her door chain before it opened again. “Come on in - Klaus no!”

A large tortoiseshell cat - or perhaps a very small lynx - shot out from the door. Felix was already crouched down on the floor, and he caught the creature just as it was nearly to freedom. “Hello Klaus,” he said, very seriously.

Klaus looked up at him with wide, betrayed yellow eyes and meowed. He was _heavy._

“Nope,” Felix said as he stepped inside the door. “Not today. Better luck next time.”

“Oh Klaus,” Bernie said. “We’ve _talked_ about you being a better host! People won’t want to come here!”

“He’s fine,” Felix said as he set Klaus the probably-cat-maybe-lynx on the ground. “He keeps me on my toes.”

Bernie visibly relaxed. “Oh good,” she said, as if there was some risk that Felix might stop coming here every Saturday night. They’d been doing this since graduating from Garreg Mach University three years ago, and Felix certainly wasn’t about to stop just because Klaus kept trying to escape.

Although recently he couldn’t shake the sense that, as nice as his friendship with Bernie was, he, well, _liked_ her. Thinking about the entire thing embarrassed him. What was he supposed to do, pass her a note that said _‘do you like me? Check yes or no’?_

Worse was that other people were starting to notice. Last week he’d apparently been _smiling_ while responding to one of Bernie’s texts, and Sylvain had asked when Felix was finally going to kiss her. Felix had promptly chucked his phone at him, which had bought him a few days of peace. But it wouldn’t last long. And standing in her little entryway made him feel both soothed and nervous. At some point, he should probably _talk_ to her about his feelings. Ugh.

Bernie’s apartment was small but suffused with a warmth that Felix couldn’t quantify. She always had various ongoing craft projects scattered about - a half knitted scarf, cooling cookies on the counter, and drying watercolor paintings of the pink peonies sitting on her little patio. She was forever apologizing for the state of her apartment, and Felix was forever telling her that he didn’t care. He liked the glimpse it gave him into the way that she saw the world. 

Klaus meowed at them both and then dashed into Bernie’s little galley kitchen, where he leapt up to the top of the counters, then the fridge, and stared at them both balefully. He’d pout up there for about thirty minutes, then join them on the couch and headbutt Felix until he received attention just like he did every week. 

“What do you want to watch?” Bernie asked as they settled on her couch. “There’s a chopped marathon on. Oh, and I found a bunch of I Love Lucy dvds on sale!”

“I don’t care,” Felix said, settling onto her couch. He’d helped carry it in when she moved, and Caspar had practically dropped it on his feet. Stupid Caspar. “I hope we get to the one where they’re forced to use durian. The chefs always panic.”

Bernie giggled, a quiet little sound. He still remembered the first time he’d heard her giggle, a quiet little sound that had surprised them both. She’d apologized and promptly bolted.

He wondered if it was normal for his chest and shoulders to ease whenever he heard it now. It certainly didn’t happen with his other friends.

Bernie turned on the tv and flipped through the channels as Felix spread out over his side of the couch. She landed on an episode of _Chopped._ It was midway through an episode he’d seen before, but he didn’t mind. The stupidity of the chefs trying to use the ice cream maker never got old. It messed them up _every_ time. For her part, Bernie fished out a small wooden hoop and some sort of purple string from a basket beside her couch. This was another victory. It had taken a long time for Bernie to learn that Felix wasn’t going to mock her hobbies. 

“What are you making?” He asked. One of the chefs was complaining about how their ice cream hadn’t come out correctly. Idiot. 

“It’s embroidery,” she said shyley, showing Felix a half finished image of red rose. “I’m making it for Dorothea’s birthday. I really hope she likes it.”

“It’s pretty,” he said. “I bet she’ll love it.”

Bernie blushed. At first he thought she was just embarrassed from the compliment, but then her eyes dropped to the floor and her blush deepened until she was approximately the color of a tomato. “Do you want to learn? How to embroider, I mean.”

Before Felix could open his mouth, Bernie curled up into a ball. “Sorry, that was stupid, of course you don’t want to -”

“Yes,” he said firmly. “That looks, uh, cool.”

She uncurled, just slightly. “Really?”

“Yeah,” he said. Before that exact moment he hadn’t particularly cared about embroidery. But as he looked at Bernie’s wide eyes, learning it suddenly seemed like the most important thing in the world. And it was a practical skill. He could probably use it to patch holes in his pants instead of having to buy new ones. “Can you show me how?”

She bit her lip for a moment, then nodded. “O-okay. If you’re sure.” She reached into a basket beside the couch and pulled out a second hoop, some white fabric, and some more shiny string. “Here, I’ve actually got a pre-drawn pattern that you can use.”

She’d pulled out a book with sewing stitches too, but Felix was already dragging the thread in and out of the fabric. It took him under twenty seconds to stab himself.

“Ow,” he hissed, shaking his hand. As if fencing and poking holes in Sylvain’s ego weren’t enough, he now had a third hobby that involved stabbing things. His finger hurt _and_ he had a messy, uneven stretch of stitches on his hoop. It looked like an artistic interpretation of a drunk man trying and failing to walk a straight line.

“Go slower,” Bernie said. “Oh, don’t let that discourage you! Sorry! I mean, it might help if you go slower. But you want to keep your stitches smaller. All of your backstitches should be the same size.” She pulled her hoop over. “Do you want to look at mine again?”

Bernadetta’s stitches were precise, so perfectly even that Felix felt like he’d ruin them if he touched the hoop. She’d done something with different shades of the thread so that the rose petals had soft shadows and highlights. Pride fluttered in his chest. She was so talented, though she never seemed to recognize it. She gave beautiful scarves out to her friends that he knew she knit herself. Her clothes all had beautiful little flowers embroidered on the collars or cuffs. He could never work out why she seemed so embarrassed by it all.

As Felix glanced up at her, he felt another wave of affection. He wanted more moments like this, with the two of them peacefully sitting on the couch, watching tv and enjoying each other’s company. He wasn’t entirely sure how to express that. He probably _could_ ask Ingrid or Annette for advice, but then again he also _could_ gargle razors. Neither was going to happen.

He should just be blunt, right? Just tell her exactly what he was thinking about. He wasn’t interested in the sort of stupid innuendos that Sylvain flung at every woman in his line of sight, and he didn’t think Bernie would like that either. 

“Bernadetta,” he said slowly. How did people _do_ this? “I - I like spending time with you.”

Bernie gave him one of her small, rare smiles. “I like spending time with you too.”

He cleared his throat. “Maybe we could...go on a date?”

The moment of silence that followed gave Felix a newfound appreciation for the time he’d seen Bernie nearly dive into a dumpster out of embarrassment. He wondered if it was possible to sink all the way into Bernie’s couch and blissfully suffocate in between the striped green cushions. 

“Is this….not a date?” Bernie asked.

Felix stared. “What?”

Bernie blinked. “Are we….not dating?”

His mouth opened. Then closed. Then opened again. “I mean, I would like us to be? Or - er - to have been?”

On the other side of the couch, Bernie’s face had frozen in a pale mask of horror. “Have we not been dating for the past six months?”

“Uh,” said Felix. “Not that I was aware of? But it’s okay if we were? ”

“Oh no,” Bernie whispered. She buried her face in her hands. “I just - I just assumed - you got me a birthday present and we text every day, and every week we hang out. So I just - oh _Goddess._ Oh Bernie, you’re so -”

“Hey!” Felix shouted, desperate to head off a guilt spiral. “Bernie. I was asking you out on a date. I _want_ to date you.”

She paused, then squinted at him from between her fingers. “You do?”

“You _just_ said that you thought we’d been dating for six months,” Felix said. “How is it suddenly a surprise that I want to date you?”

“I don’t know!” Bernie shrieked. “I’m just - oh this is so embarrassing! You probably don’t want to date me anymore. ”

Felix groaned. “Okay, I want to date you. Do you want to date me?” He was probably blushing as hard as Bernie was. 

There was another long pause. “Yeah,” Bernie said finally. “That would be nice.” And then, a moment later, “oh is that what I’m supposed to say?”

“Yes,” Felix said. He leaned forward a little, feeling like the moment called for some sort of physical affection. Nearly as uncertain as Bernie, he pressed a careful kiss to her forehead. He felt her relax against him. “I like being with you,” he told her, then winced. The moment probably called for something more romantic. He could almost hear Sylvain laughing at him.

But Bernie smiled. “I like being with you too, Felix. Do you want to keep embroidering, or - ?”

“Sure,” he said, and gave her a small smile of his own. As he picked up the embroidery, Bernie scooted closer so that their knees were pressed together, and laid her head on his shoulder as he started again. 

**Author's Note:**

> Much thanks to [Skreev](https://twitter.com/skreev1) for beta'ing this fic! She's got some [awesome Felix rarepair stuff ](https://archiveofourown.org/users/skreev) that you should check out too, including a fake dating Felibern fic. 
> 
> Thanks for reading! Check out [my twitter ](https://twitter.com/halcyon_autumn) for more fic updates and fire emblem ramblings.


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